CAPE TOWN (CONTD.):

CAPE TOWN (CONTD.): I’m writing this Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before Leila and I need to leave for the airport at the end of our time here. What a beautiful city! We figured out fairly well how to get around on the train system. Today, we took a long walk from the Observatory district, where we’re staying, over to the UCT campus in nearby Mowbray. But we couldn’t take the cable-car ride up Table Mountain, because of high winds.
Well, Thursday morning we took the Robben Island tour, as highly recommended by many friends.
We had two tour guides. The first, who led us on the bussed part of the tour, left us with a determinedly upbeat message that, “Things like this musrt never happen again”. The second guide, who took us on the inside part of the tour, was himself a former prisoner, and gave us a sober account of his time there. Afterewards, I was able to catch a few words alone with him, and got his view of the whole TRC and amnesty process.
In the afternoon, we met a guy called Roger Friedman who covered the TRC as a journalist and has since done a lot of media work with Archbishop Tutu.
Yesterday (Friday), we started off by going by train to Rondebosch, two stops along the line, and then walking to something called the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. I had had a longstanding appointment with its director, Charles Villa-Vincencio. But he was busy, so instead we met with his deputy, Fanie Du Toit. I was actually glad we could do that, as Fanie is himself a really interesting, thoughtful person. One of the things he talked about was coming of age as a young Afrikaaner, and how excited he’d been as a freshman at Stellenbosch university to be invited to join the Junior Broederbund; and some of the slightly glasnost-y things that were happening in the JB at that time (mid-1980s).
Then, we went to the Direct Action Center for Peace and Memory, where we had a quick meeting. Then we had a great lunch with Leslie Swartz, a professor of clinical psychology– currently at Stellenbosch, formerly at UCT– who has written a really intriguing book on “Culture and Mental Health.”
I had enjoyed Leslie’s book so much that I was afraid I’d be setting myself up for disappointment on meeting the actual person. But luckily, no! He talked really interestingly over a great, late lunch in a part of the city we hadn’t been to previously.
This morning, Hugo Van Der Merwe, who works here for the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, came over to our B&B and we had a good final discussion with him.
The notebooks are full! I got so much great material– notes that (mainly) Leila took from our meetings, documentary materials that I gathered here, general impressions and ideas for how to push the project further forward. Now, I certainly have more than enough material from the three countries I’ve been to on this trip– as well as from my 2001 trips to Brussels, The Hague, Jo’burg and Maputo, and from last year’s trip to rwanda– that I certainly can start writing the “Violence and its Legacies” book once I get myself organized to do so.
Anyway– the next post on here will be from good old Charlottesville, Virginia. That’s where I’m headed now.
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